Commentary on Communist history and ideology with comparisons to other Totalitarian ideologies and movements. Also links contemporary political events to ideological themes and trends.

Friday, February 8, 2019

“Racism” – It's Time to Repudiate the Guilt

Does any sane
person who pays the slightest attention to the talking heads from the
television (MSNBC) and cable networks (CNN), or the news and opinion writers
for the New York Times or the Washington Post believe that racism is
ever going to lessen anywhere in the western world? Only a fool would bet on
that particular outcome. Why? In a word: “Racism” is the gift that keeps on
giving.

How did this
come about? “Racism”
in the 1950s was a term then with a much more precise, recognizable meaning than
it has today. It was largely limited in its circulation to liberal
intellectuals and academics who studied the history of slavery and contemplated
racial segregation in post-WWII America. Jim Crow was in place then with
segregated schools, public facilities and businesses, double standards of
expectations and accountability for blacks and whites, all premised on a
widespread white perception that blacks were … well, generally, less capable,
less reliable, less intelligent than whites. The segregation was well
entrenched (de jure in the south; de facto in the north) and blacks in America
were significantly poorer, less healthy, less educated than whites as well as
feeling the daily sting of the indignities, along with suffering the
hostilities, mistreatment and condescension of whites.

By coincidence,
the American conquerors about this time were just finishing their occupation of
defeated Germany, the occupation prolonged for years because the Americans felt
they needed to remain as long as it took to make sure that the German people
were completely free of this nasty “superior race” nonsense they had imbibed
from the Charlie Chaplain mustachioed Austrian corporal and his henchmen who
had brought most of Europe to ruins. Which proved finally to be a bit
embarrassing for Americans, at least for those who recalled that their soldier
boys, who were sent far across the ocean to dispose of the racist Hitler and stay
and teach the Die Herren und Frauen to love
democracy and recite Thomas Jefferson’s “self-evident” truth, “that all men are
created equal,” came over in racially segregated units. President Truman’s
desegregation order for the Armed Services didn’t come until 1948. Black
American soldiers fighting oversees for equality came home to segregated public
facilities, lunch counters and schools.

It was judged past
time for a correction in these matters, and so it would be. Beginning in the 1950s, the dismantling of
segregation and the criminalization of racial discrimination was launched. With
the landmark “Brown versus the Board of
Education” the Federal government forcibly desegregated the public schools.
By the 1960s the conscience of white America was convicted of its racial
iniquities. The correction was soon at top speed with the civil rights movement
leading the way, and the rest, as they say, is history. In the five decades that
followed the
equalizing of black and white America became “mission central” with the
legislatures creating and the courts enforcing anti-discrimination laws in the
areas of housing, employment, government contracting and education, including the
forced bussing of school children. Massive federal aid flowed to the heavily
black-populated cities like Detroit,
burned down by black rioters in the middle-late 1960s. Affirmative Action and EEOC,
came into being with strict compliance requirements for universities and
employers to make room for members of “underrepresented” groups. Across the
country schools and universities focused their pedagogy on the evils of racism,
the history of slavery and segregation and the moral imperative of “equality.”
Blacks moved into prominent positions in every region of American culture and
life, including the American presidency, Secretary of State, Attorney General
and the U.S. Supreme Court. Utterance of the “n-word” for whites became a
career-killer and a ticket to social ostracism.An entire new industry, the “diversity” industry, came into being, its
employees moving into business, education and government, tasked to promote the
interests and guard the feelings of officially designated victims of
discrimination, and to subject the would be discriminators to programs of reeducation
where they learned about “white privilege,” microaggressions and how to “celebrate
diversity.”

By 2009 with Jim Crow long dead and the jubilant
inauguration of America’s first black President, elected in a still
majority-white country, one might be tempted to think that the “racism” that
marked racially segregated America in the 1950s had been vanquished or at least
diminished enough to make everyone optimistic about the future of
race-relations.Wrong! In the last year of his Presidency (2015)
Barack Obama in an interview
made the following observation:

Obama: “What is also true is that the legacy
of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives —
you know, that casts a long shadow. And that's still part of our DNA that's
passed on. We're not cured of it.”

Interviewer: “Racism”

Obama: “Racism. We’re not cured of it.”

What then were we to make of this “DNA” metaphor?
Unfortunately, few, if any of the cognoscenti who constantly lecture Americans 24x7
on the ubiquity of “racism” and daily pounce on yet another politician or
celebrity who breaks the strict rules of “Diversity-Speak,” bothered to decode
the President’s remarks so that the average American might get a sense of what he
was in for. They can be boiled down to: “Racism has always been the defining
feature of American life and will be far into the future.” What then, we might
wonder, is the “cure,” and who gets to say that it has been successful and the
patient is whole and released from treatment?

These questions expose
the disingenuousness typical of Obama on the subject of race. The “our DNA” is
white DNA, and the “racism” that “we’re not cured of” is “white racism” – there
is no other kind in today’s America that will be countenanced. Obama chose the
wrong metaphor.His view of race is
better expressed in theological terms. “Racism” is America’s “original sin.” It
was, and still is, committed exclusively by white people, and no matter what
metaphor you care to use, consider it a permanent fixture of American society. “We
shall overcome someday.” But, sorry Pal, not today. With sin comes guilt, and white America now finds itself
confronted with guilt, virtually unlimited guilt.

Guilt that comes in unlimited quantities can be a very
valuable commodity for the right sort of “entrepreneurs” who know how to make
it pay out in long term dividends, particularly when those dividends are of,
shall we say, a material kind. Guilt makes most people feel really bad, remain
highly vulnerable and willing to do things of an extreme nature to be free of
it, things that may have little to do with the source of the guilt and may be
highly detrimental to their self-interest and well being.

Guilt, in effect, can open the door to a form of extortion,
moral extortion, if you will. When you feel guilty because you believe that you
have done something harmful to someone, the person you have harmed has a moral
advantage over you, so to speak. That person is the innocent party; you are the
guilty party. You are in his debt. You owe him … something.It may be an apology, change of behavior or
attitude, or maybe compensation.Relieving the guilt becomes a moral transaction and both parties (the
injurer and the injured) have a responsibility to act in good faith and bring
the transaction to a conclusion.

Ah, yes, “the conclusion” and here is the rub. Atonement is
the performance side of guilt – giving what you owe to the innocent party,
doing what you need to do to atone for the wrong. The corollary of unlimited
guilt is unlimited atonement (no conclusion), and when what you “owe” becomes unlimited
the person you “owe” is no longer innocent, and you are no longer a free,
accountable person making moral-spiritual restitution. You are a pawn being
manipulated, being used to someone else’s advantage. Good faith has given way
to exploitation. From being the sinner, you are now the sinned-against.

Unlimited guilt is what makes Obama’s “racism” a tool of
moral extortion. An extortionist never says, “OK, your
debt is paid; your obligation is fulfilled.” No, the blackmailer always comes back
for more and ups the ante. “Not enough; I need more – until you are cured.
I’ll let you know when that happens. Trust me.” “Racism,” however, never, ever,
diminishes. Rather it becomes ever more insidious, protean, if you will, with
forms and manifestations, heretofore unheard of – “systemic racism,” “economic
racism,” “environmental racism,” “institutional racism,” the inventory expands
almost daily. Moreover, “racism has provided the “ism” template (“sexism,”
“ableism,” “homophobia,” “Islamophobia,” “transphobia”) for the rapid expansion
of the diversity industry, with other large groups of the suitably injured and aggrieved,
recruited to leverage new categories of guilt and make them pay dividends.

How does the “racism” create the moral leverage that makes
the extortion work so effectively?First, it opens up a vast moral distance between the accuser and the
accused. When someone denounces someone else as a “racist,” this act publicly
affirms both, the accuser’s moral superiority, and the moral degeneracy of the
accused. Since racism is the very worst of human pathologies, deeply embedded
in the personality, the accuser by virtue of both recognizing and confronting
this evil individual, gives confirmation of a moral superiority and rectitude
of the highest order.And, since the targets
of racist are members of oppressed and exploited groups, the accuser’s virtue
shines even brighter since he is speaking truth-to-power, he becomes a beacon
of moral courage, taking a stand against bigotry and hatred.

There is another kind of leverage that makes the
extortionist demand virtually invincible. With “racism” being in one’s “DNA,”
as Obama put it, the guilt is indisputable and inextinguishable. Remember, “we’re
not cured of it.” No white person has ever convinced his accuser that he is not
a “racist” and never will. Apologizing (Please, I am not a racist) or indignantly
denying it simply ups the extortionist leverage of the term while the accused
squirms like a worm on a hook. It’s a Catch 22. Once “racism’ is entrenched
(“in our DNA,” “not cured”), game, set, match. This, of course, gives a lie to the
rhetoric of “healing,” “reconciliation” and ultimately to “forgiveness,” cover-language
used to soften and disguise the coercion and give the extortion a patina of moral
legitimacy. But the accuser has no interest in reconciliation or incentive to
forgive. With reconciliation, the “gift” would have to stop giving. Diversity
professionals would have to find another source of employment. Al Sharpton would not longer be called, “Reverend, ” and would likely be in prison.

A turning point in American history was the 2016
Presidential election when the obsession with “racism” was raised to a level of
collective hysteria with Donald Trump routinely characterized by the entire
main stream media and the opposition party as another Adolf Hitler, a 21st-century,
pogrom-planning fascist, broadly supported by voters (62 million people)
motivated entirely by racial prejudice and hatred. The most memorable and
appalling moment of the contest was Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables”
denunciation of Trump supporters as “racists, sexists … you name it.”

With the improbable outcome of the election the hysteria has
only increased, the most recent manifestation of its ferocity the unhinged outpouring
of hatred from social media sources and the hostile and dishonest coverage of
the national media of an incident involving a group of white, Catholic
high school boys from Covington, Kentucky (Boyd Cathey) who encountered a native American
protestor in Washington D.C. “The smile of one of the students, Nick Sandman,
captured in a now famous photograph, was twisted by the virtue signalers into a
disrespectful ‘smirk,’ a kind of ‘racist dog-whistle,’ a symbol of ‘white
privilege,’”
all the standard tropes of today’s emboldened character assassins.
Reigned down upon Sandman and his fellow students was a torrent of
condemnations of in the thousands via social media that included death threats,
demands to publish names and addresses, appeals to have them expelled from
their school, rejected from universities, and encouragement to kill them and
their families. All of this from Social Justice Warriors who decry the “hatred”
of Trump supporters.

So, in contemplating this grim state of affairs, we need to
ask now: to where has this 60-year battle against “racism” taken us? Sadly, it has
taken us to a point where it should be clear that “racism,” now saturating the commentary
on every facet of American experience, is not a word that describes the
behavior or personality of any particular individual. “Racism” does not depict any state of reality.
It is merely a word of condemnation to complete a ritualized chant. “You are a
racist” is a performative
act in an excommunication ceremony (an expulsion ritual) whereby decent, normal
individuals are pronounced to be moral lepers, unfit for civilized society and
cast into the darkness. Recall the conclusion of Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables”
slur, “they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America.” This expulsion
ritual is now frequently and routinely conducted by a vast network of moral
police who occupy positions in government, the media, education and
entertainment. They target white Americans who look back and wonder why the
massive, decades-long efforts of atonement for racism have only intensified black
resentment and hostility, why Black Lives Matter thugs are allowed to rampage
and tear down historical monuments, why blacks are still burning down the
cities, why millionaire, celebrity black athletes scorn the national anthem.
These targets recognize that the “racism in our DNA” is the veiled language of the
extortionists who use guilt as an instrument of intimidation, domination and
revenge.The guilt must be repudiated. Whites
who succumb to the accusation of “racism” are embracing a future of their own destruction.